Biography

Amy J. Pickering is a postdoctoral scholar in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University and an affiliated researcher at the International Center for Diarrheal Diseases Research, Bangladesh. She has a master’s degree in environmental engineering from UC Berkeley and a Ph.D in Environment and Resources from Stanford University. Amy uses social science, epidemiology, and microbiology to understand diarrheal disease transmission pathways among households in low-income countries and develop strategies to interrupt them. She has done several field studies in Tanzania that employ microbial techniques to identify sources and mechanisms of hand and environmental fecal contamination. Currently she is involved in several health impact evaluations in Africa and Asia: a household-level behavior intervention in Tanzania, a school-based hand hygiene intervention in Kenya, a community-led total sanitation intervention in Mali, and a community-level water disinfection in Bangladesh. You can read more about her research at www.stanford.edu/~amyjanel

Before arriving at Stanford, Amy coordinated an Initiative on Safe Water and Sanitation supported by the Blum Center for Developing Economies at the University of California, Berkeley. Amy also worked on the design and performance assessment of the UV Tube at Berkeley, a low-cost household water disinfection technology that employs UV light to inactivate pathogens. Implementing the UV Tube technology led to many adventures, from participating in Tsunami relief work in Sri Lanka to serving as the Director of Project Development for the non-profit organization, Fundación Cántaro Azul in La Paz, Mexico.

Amy's exposure to environmental policy comes from her stint as an environmental engineer in the Office of Water for the US Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, DC. After her cubicle time at the EPA, she escaped to South East Asia on a William J. Fulbright Scholarship to wander around with her camera conducting a documentary photography project focused on the interaction between people and water. Her photos can be viewed online at www.pbase.com/amyjanel/water_and_people

Amy also claims to be an avid photographer, runner, hiker, and rock climber, with a passion for preventing children from dying from diarrhea around the world. In the photo, Amy is riding the bus with her field team in Dar es Salaam. In the photo, Amy is collecting a soil sample from a pit latrine in Bagamoyo, Tanzania.